Asterix & his friends were popular in my household growing up, appealing to my brother and me as simple comic books, but also to my parents who were history and language teachers. As I got older, my appreciation for the books only grew, as I came to understand more of the jokes and word plays, & learnt more about the historical & cultural settings involved. As this happened, I began to notice that I had a lot of shared interests with Getafix, the village druid. These included medicine (anaesthetics), botany (gardening as opposed to foraging!), faith (Christianity instead of Druidism), & even down to his Magic Potion (in my case coffee!). The final clincher was when my hair went white as a side-effect from immunotherapy for melanoma! As a result, I started using Getafix as a profile name or avatar in a number of online settings, but when i joined twitter, @Getafix was already taken, so i settled on @DrGetafix, and so here we are today.
Aside from anaesthetics, I have no formal training or qualification in the areas I’m likely to post about, so take everything I say with a pinch of salt. Where possible, I will provide references for material I have pinched from elsewhere, but I suspect a lot of the things I post will have been floating around in my head for a while and will be drawn from multiple sources that I may not be able to recall. If you think I’ve pinched something of yours, please let me know!
In addition to the anaesthetics content, a lot of my medical posts will be coloured by two other major influences. The first is my diagnosis with advanced melanoma in 2013 and the subsequent ups and downs that have ensued, and the second is an interest in Human Factors/Ergonomics (especially as it relates to patient safety) that developed almost by accident during the time I was off work after the melanoma diagnosis.
I don’t intend to publicise this site much, as it is mainly a location for me to put down my thoughts in writing, and as a place to refer people to if we are discussing things i have already written about. Also, the site itself is a learning experience for me as I have no background in programming or graphic design, but as I pick up new skills and knowledge, I expect it will evolve. So bear with me if the site doesn’t look quite look right, or there are broken links etc, and I’m more than happy to receive constructive feedback.
